My grandmother did when I was little – she had one of those big steel drums in the backyard and it was all black and rusted out. (This would’ve been in western PA in the early-mid 80s)
We lived on five acres when I was growing up in Florida and we didn’t have trash pickup. We burned all our garbage except things too dangerous or too large to fit in the burn barrel. The burn barrel was a 55 gallon drum.
We live on five acres now in central Florida and even though we have trash pickup we occasionally will burn or trash if the us too much to fit in the trash can. Note we have a large fire pit that we also use to burn branches and mounds and minds of horse and donkey poop.
I grew up in LA in the 50s and 60s, and remember having a trash incinerator in the backyard not unlike what’s shown from the TV show photos. Not a surprise, that show as most others was shot in LA. I think by the early 60s their use was discontinued for air quality reasons and refuse pickup became more comprehensive.
I remember it was concrete and I think only paper-type trash was burned. I also remember garbage trucks from that same era, so I assume food waste along with metal and glass got picked up while the paper stuff was burned. There was far less plastic used in packaging so I suspect the danger from fumes may have been less than burning today’s trash might produce. Or, it may have been the same and everyone (including the local governments mandating such burning) may have been naive and ignorant about it.
absolutely.
the city gave us the burning barrel and a mesh screen to prevent ash from going up in the air.
burned everything except aerosol cans and plastic items. plastic messed up the barrel and made a mess.
It never struck me as odd. Most people I know kept their old newspapers separate from their trash (and let the pile go for a little while before doing anything with it), so the opening lyric made sense to me.
Here in the Land of Freedom (Texas), if you live in an unincorporated area it’s on you to contract out for garbage pickup. But there’s no law that says you have to do so either. So anyhow, there’s a major subdivision outside of San Antonio that has a major issue with garbage piling up because the low-income residents/absentee landlords can’t/don’t bother with garbage pickup. http://www.mysanantonio.com/opinion/editorials/article/Neglect-at-Camelot-II-spawns-public-health-hazard-6352325.php
Freedom’s great in theory. But as you note, some people lack a sense of responsibility. I’ve spent enough time in Texas to see that some people (and I doubt they’re all “low income”) figure driving your garbage a mile away and then dumping it by the side of the road is an acceptable way to handle the situation.
I grew up in New York City, in the borough of Queens. My area of Queens was mostly apartment buildings, and they mostly had incinerators. There was always a plume of smoke rising from one building or another. This was in the sixties. So it wasn’t done just in suburban American homes, but in cities, too.
I also remember going up to Vermont for summers, and burning (well, my father did the burning) trash there. We stayed in a pretty isolated and rural area, and if the trash wasn’t burned regularly, raccoons would get into it and make a mess.
I just look at pictures from China and then think about my methods of burning anything and I feel like a saint.
Or as us in CA politics said “Big Daddy Unruh” and “Travelin’ Sam Yorty”. 
Colorful nicknames then. I worked for “Scoop Jackson.”
I live in a rural area, and we have had problems with folks dumping on the side of the road. I got pretty close to a physical fight with a guy that was draining the sewage from a bluebird motor home. He had stayed at a nearby campground, but didn’t want to pay the $7 dump fee at the campground? In a $500K motorhome?:smack:
“But it’s an empty field! Nobody lives here!”